


Promises.

by TayBartlett9000



Category: Only Fools and Horses
Genre: Arguments, Brotherly Affection, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Promises, baby Rodders, thirteen yearold Delboy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:31:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9248348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: After hearing his parents arguing, thirteen yearold Delboy hears his baby brother crying and makes a promise to protect him and keep him safe from the world.





	

Promises.

By Tay Bartlett.

 

Del sat up in bed as the raised voices reached his young ears. With a trembling hand, Del pushed the thin bed clothes off his thin body and sat up further. He blinked the sleep from his tired eyes and ran a hand through his touseled hair as he listened hard to the bellowing voices drifting through the narrow hallway into his bedroom. The sounds had long since been able to frighten him. Del had listened to his parents arguing for years now and the noises only served to annoy him. He sighed, knowing that it would be futile to try and get back to sleep now.  

His mother and father were at it again. This was the third time this week, and it was only Wednesday. As Del listened, he could have swarm that he had caught the words “lyer,” “midlife,” and the current favourite, “Bastard!” The thirteen yearold boy sighed heavily, preparing to rise. He had been quenching disputes between his mother and his father for years now and was well practiced in the art. He stood, donned a pair of jeans and a scruffy shirt and made his way towards the door.

What stopped him however, was a small and pitiful cry issuing from the room next to his own. It was a horrible sound, full of fear and human misery. Del’s face lost its angry scowl of impatience and collapsed instead into a look of sorrowful pitty. He had been woken again.

Del cracked open the door and peered out into the dimly lit hallway. He could see his mother and father standing face to face in the middle of the living room, almost nose to nose as they screamed at each other. His father’s face was bright red with barely controlled anger, or was it drink? Del wasn’t quite sure.  Del’s mother was looking frightfully upset, her long waves of golden hair tumbling  haphazardly around her pretty heart shaped face. Del felt another stab of anger as he heard his father cursing his mother and everything that she stood for. He hated his father. He hated him with all his heart. He knew that his mother was ill and Del thought that anyone in his right mind should have been able to guess that to. His father was supposed to love her, was he not?

Stepping into the room that ajoined his own, Del looked round and saw the source of the feeble wailing. The baby lay in his cot, fists clenched, face wrinkled up with pain, but not pain of the physical kind. The pain that the baby boy was  experiencing was more psychological.

“Hay there Rudders,” Del said quietly, moving swiftly across the room and bending down to lift the baby boy into his arms. “You alright bruv?”

In Del’s arms, the baby stopped crying, resting  his head against his older brother’s  shoulder and opening his eyes to look into Del’s. Del felt an unfamiliar tugging in his heart at the sight of those eyes, the kind  of emotional tugging that only his brother could bring out of him.

Rodney had been born into a family with no money or  prospects what so ever.  Even Del, though he worked every hour the lord gave him to put some  food on the family table had little in the way of  money  for either himself or his brother, meaning that he had no choice what so ever but to remain in this small house until the day he died.

Del sat on the floor beside Rodney’s little cot, cradling the baby in his arms. Rodney had calmed down completely now and was lying  peacefully asleep once more.  

Del lay the child down in the  small cot once more and  smoothed the sheets. He rose swiftly and moved towards the door, taking one last look back at the baby boy. “Don’t worry Rudders,” he said quietly, in a voice that he was never  able to use when talking to anyone else. The raised voices of his parents were still ringing clearly through the hallway and he scowled again. This was no type of life for a young boy to live. “I won’t let  anything happen to you bruv. Don’t you worry.  None of the bastards in this world will ever bring you down. Trust me.”

The little boy gurgled happily in his sleep, safe in the knowledge that he would always have his older brother to protect him. Del himself would  never have anyone to watch over him, but  at that precise moment, he made the mental promise to make sure that his brother at least was safe.

 That was his promise. And Delboy never broke promises.


End file.
